Down On The Urban Farm

The Urban Farm is the home where I live, located in the middle of Phoenix, AZ. These days I call the Urban Farm an environmental showcase home, which sports a primarily edible landscape, 60 fruit trees, rainwater and greywater harvesting, two kinds of solar panels, one for creating my own electricity and one for heating the house, a patio that is primarily made from reclaimed materials, an outdoor kitchen and outdoor shower.

For several years I have been opening my home for tours and classes. The intent of these events is to share with visitors the different green lifestyle choices that they can make. Of late I have been getting requests to put my tour online and with technology where it is at the tools are here. Over the next few months I will build a comprehensive list of articles and pictures of the different projects that we have installed over the years. Check out the Urban Farm Tour section of my blog for the latest additions. I encourage you to ask questions and jump in and try these different technologies in your own yard.

Some Beginning Philosophy

I'll be the first to admit that the yard is somewhat different than you may have experienced before, having food to eat throughout the entire yard. We believe as a culture we are taught that it is our job to control mother nature, we on the other hand choose to leave her alone and let her produce that which she feels is appropriate. To that end here are several tenets that I believe.

1. If a plant is growing...let it grow. There are quite a few volunteer plants that have chosen to grow here. Among them are broccoli, lettuce, hollyhocks, palo verde, mesquite, pecan, tomatoes and cucumbers.

2. Build soil. People spend a lot of time, energy and money cleaning up the plant debris from their yard, then spend more time, energy and money to fertilize. Contained in those leaves are a plethora of nutrients that can easily be converted to nurture the soil.

Use a mulching mower to grind up the leaves. In other areas, use the leaves (especially in the summer) to create a nice thick layer of mulch to protect the soil from the summer heat.

Both of these practices build the nutrient value in the soil giving us great vegetables and fruits.

3. Use everything as many times as possible. We attempt to use each asset as many times as I can before it leaves the property. One example of this is the tap water that is used to cool the air from the evaporative cooler is collected and placed in a stock tank for use later in the year. There are fish in the pond, adding fish fertilizer to the water. Then the water is used to water the various plants growing in the area.

4. If it doesn’t produce food or flowers why plant it? You will notice that most all the plants that are growing here give something that is useful, either fruits, vegetables or flowers. This is a concept called edible landscaping. Wouldn’t it be great to convert whole parks to this idea.

These concepts come from an area of study called permaculture, the art and science of living with nature. For more in-depth explanation visit www.permaculture.net on the internet or acquire the book Permaculture by Bill Molison.

The Urban Farm Thermal Heater

Imagine for a moment that you jump into your car that has been sitting in the sun in the middle of August or January for that matter – it’s kinda hot to oh my gosh. You burn your hands on the steering wheel and your tush on the seat. What if we could capture this heat and do something with it? That’s the idea behind the Urban Farm Thermal Heater.

This is something that I have dreamed about for years, but given that I am not an engineer implementing this was not something that was happening. Then my friend Bill Cunningham from Southwest Solar told me he had developed a Box heater, a metal box 10 feet long, 4 feet wide and 8 inches tall with a glass plate covering the top. Plus the inside is painted black. The panel is mounted on the roof pointing south at about a 40 degree angle to most effectively catch the winter suns heat. For those of you in the southern hemisphere the panel would need to face north.

The downside to this wonderful heater is that it only heats when the sun is out. Living in Phoenix however provides lots of sunny days so that is not much of a problem. Some of the upside includes that we are directly taking the suns heat for use in the Urban Farm and except for the low voltage blower fan that uses a small amount of energy there is no other electricity needed to run it.

Our thermal system is designed to heat the two bedrooms and bathroom on the north side of the house. There is a doorway with a drape across it that separates this area from the rest of my home. Amazingly the drape creates enough of a barrier to keep the area 5 to 10 degrees cooler in the summer.

So here is how it works. Air is pulled into the thermal unit through an 8 inch diameter hole in the back of the unit.

The unit is divided in half horizontally with a sheet of black painted sheet of metal. The air that enters the unit is drawn across the front of the panel from the left to the right side then passes to the underside of the pane to continue the heating process.

Mounted in the heating unit is a thermostat that comes on when the unit reaches 100 degrees. That way the heater does not start blowing heated air till it is warm enough. There is also a thermostat in the hall that allows me to control the heat blown into the house.

The blower unit is mounted inside the attic and connected through the roof to the heater unit. On the outside of the house the ducting is made of a flexible 8 inch insulated tubing and is encased inside sheet metal piping. The flexible insulated tubing runs through the attic and is delivered via a vent into my bedroom.

When I need the heat my intent is to leave the thermostat so that it will run anytime there is enough heat in the unit to heat my space. The vent is aimed at the block wall of my room so that the wall is used as a heat sink, storing warmth for later release.

The unit has just been installed and I don’t have any data yet on the efficacy of the unit. I will continue to add data as it comes available.

I recently emailed Bill and asked him for some technical data on the unit and here is what he said.

Short Answer: The thermostat in the solar heater comes on when the temp reaches 110F and goes off when it gets down to 90. The energy for the small blower uses less than 200 Watts.

Long answer: The solar heater can harvest up to about 10,000 BTU's per hour, which is equivalent to 2,800Watts of heat into the house (more than 10 times the energy going into the blower). I think that the "real world" heat gain is at least 1500 Watts which is what a typical electric plug in portable heater consumes and delivers. Over a typical day the solar heater can probably deliver about 75,000 to 90,000 BTU's to the house (depends mostly upon outside air temperature).

The solar heater is a great way to leverage the fossil energy into 10 times more, but since you have 2,000 watts of pv solar electric energy on your roof, (Blog post coming soon on this) so you are not using coal derived electricity like most other folks. End of lesson on solar and fossil energy theory. Typical nerd engineer answer: you ask me what time it is and I tell you how to build a clock!

The Urban Farm
An Environmental Showcase Home
in the Heart of Phoenix Arizona.

The Urban Farm is the home of Greg Peterson and is located in the middle of Phoenix, AZ. It is generally defined as an environmental showcase home, which sports a primarily edible landscape, 60 fruit trees, rainwater and greywater harvesting, two kinds of solar panel - one for creating my own electricity and one for heating the house - a patio that is primarily made from reclaimed materials, an d an outdoor kitchen and shower.

For several years the Urban Farm has regularly been opened for tours and classes. The intent of these events is to share with visitors different green lifestyle choices available. Our events include: classes on gardening, composting, keeping chickens, permaculture, edible landscape design, greywater and rainwater and the occasional house concert. The Urban Farm sits on a typical urban lot that is 80 feet wide and 160 feet deep. Both the yard and the home have been recreated to emulate as green of a lifestyle as possible.

Here are a few of the things you will see at the Urban Farm:

• Front Yard – edibles everywhere.
Fruit trees include apples, pears, peaches, loquats, oranges, lemons, limes, limequats, figs and mesquite. Vegetables this time of year include root crops, leaf crops, brassicas (broccoli), peas, and lots of flowers.

• Roof – for solar.
- Photovoltaic solar panels. These panels are designed to generate 40% of my power needs.
- Thermal Heating Panels – Works like your car sitting in the sun. Box heats up then we transfer that heat into the house.

• Backyard – Besides there being edibles everywhere in the back you will also find:
- Chickens. Our chickens are hens only, no roosters allowed as I value my sleep. Chickens in your landscape will eat bugs, weeds and weed seeds, till the soil, add fertilizer and of course give you food. Our chickens are pets therefore we only eat their eggs.
- Chicken Tractor portable chicken coop. Ours is currently housing a hen and three chicks.
- Outdoor kitchen so that we take the heat outside when we cook and so that the wash water from the sink goes into the landscape.
- Outdoor shower – primarily used for watering the landscape.
- Reclaimed material patio. The back patio is constructed of many reused materials from the urbanite (reused concrete) to the reused bricks and poles that hold up the patio.

• Inside – Whenever we remodel inside we use available green products and technologies.
- We have installed two tubular skylights in the house, one in the living room and one in the kitchen. Both are placed to reduce the need for using a light bulb during the day.

Click here for more information on the Urban Farmhttp://www.UrbanFarm.org
For more information on living a green lifestyle and to find some great green products visit YourGuideToGreen

We have a deep, dark secret at the Urban Farm. It's the reason our greens spring to life, our flowers are happy, why everything grows so well and the plants are soooo healthy. Visitors to the Urban Farm often notice the thick mulch filling all our garden beds and inquire about our secret. I tell them it’s all in the compost.

Could it be that simple? You bet!

Most of the time the heat and desert soils seem to consume organic material faster than we can add it. Building healthy soil by adding compost is the key to growing healthy plants. To compost or not to compost seems to be the question, or better yet how can you easily compost?

Start by looking at the amount of organic material that you have to compost. If all you have are your kitchen scraps, traditional composting may not be your answer, as it requires a lot of organic material, which the typical homeowner generally does not have. Do not fret however, as there are several other ways to “compost” that are much simpler and still accomplish the same results.

So what do you do with your compostable items that won’t require a PhD (stands for pile it higher and deeper) in composting? I call it noncomposting and here are just a few suggestions. My favorite way of noncomposting is to feed it to the chickens. I know, your first reaction is “I can’t keep chickens in my yard.” Now I am not talking about roosters, just hens and they are very easy to keep, are effective at weeding and controlling bugs, they eat your kitchen and yard scraps, provide lots of great compost material, and give you the added bonus of the occasional egg or two for your breakfast enjoyment.

The basic thing you need to know about chickens is that they like to have a coop area to roost in. I use the coop as a place to contain them for their first month, so that they learn that this yard is their home. Once done they can run wild in your yard if you like, with the caveat that they will eat any new tender plants that are coming up. So I have a designated chicken yard as their living space. There is also the notion of building a chicken tractor (portable chicken coop) that you move around your yard so that the chickens do the work of preparing your beds for planning. As for the kitchen and yard scraps, I just put them in their coop area and the chickens do the composting.

Now if you aren’t quite up for keeping chickens, you might try worms, which are much more innocuous. They do their own kind of digging, provide their own kind of manure and do a really good job of munching on your kitchen scraps. They are as easy to keep as putting a bucket under your sink with some shredded newspapers and worms. Or, you can add an old bathtub in some corner of your yard and vermicompost away (the fancy word for worm composting).

One of my favorite methods of noncomposting is called lasagna gardening. It is a process by which you build the soil in your garden and compost at the same time. The name says it all. Start by putting down a layer of dry material usually 1 to 3 inches deep. I like using dried leaves, hay or straw. Then add a layer of manure to facilitate the slow composting, then another layer of dry material and manure. You can add layers to your heart’s content and if you want to plant right away, dig a little hole, add some soil and plant. Over the course of a few months the layers break down and create awesome slow-cooked composted soil. The added bonus, is that you can take your kitchen scraps and tuck them into the lasagna garden and let nature take over.

Now if you still want to take a stab at traditional composting, the first thing to know is that you need a critical mass of organic material in order for the compost process to begin. The minimum size for effective composting is a cube of material 4 x 4 x 4 feet. The organic material used needs to consist of approximately 25% green/nitrogen such as manure, kitchen scraps and green grass clippings and 75% dry/carbon such as dried leaves, hay and chicken yard litter. Next you need to build the pile by thoroughly mixing your items, making sure they are fluffed appropriately so the pile can breath. Then add just enough water so that when you squeeze the wet material like a sponge a little water comes out. Add water once a week and watch the compost happen. A great item to use for building the compost holder is old pallets. Wire three of them together in a “U” shape and add a fourth on the front to hold it all in. This makes harvesting it easy when it is done, as all you have to do is unwire the pallets and use the compost.

The composting process works when bacteria eat the organic material in the pile. This causes heat (and boy does it get hot, up to 160 degrees). As the bacteria eat the compost, the pile shrinks, up to 50% in just a few weeks. After about six weeks the temperature drops dramatically and the pile needs to be turned and watered and the process starts again. Turn the pile one more time and let it sit for an additional six weeks and you will have wonderful compost. As a general rule the smaller and more uniform the pieces of material going into the pile the faster the compost will cook.

One of the most abundant materials to use in composting as well as in my noncomposting examples is leaves, which fall abundantly in most neighborhoods. Alfalfa hay is high in nitrogen and is another great material to use in your composting and lasagna gardening. When using kitchen scraps I suggest only using vegetable matter as dairy and meat products don’t seem to break down as readily and can attract pests.

Noncomposting is easy it just takes some work to get it set up and running. At the Urban Farm composting happens, with chickens, worms, lasagna gardening and composting. The fruits of our labor arrive in great tasting food that we harvest just about every day of the year. Using one or all of these methods just about guarantee you a great crop. Remember though, composting takes time as does raising a great garden. Be patient and compost away.

This article was written by Greg Peterson and originally published in Edible Phoenix Issue 2, Summer 2006.